Giving God as a reference heads the list of CV gaffes. Other clangers include a candidate who listed lion taming as a hobby, another who wrote their CV in rhyme, one who used a photograph of somebody else and one applicant only gave their name and phone number with the phrase: “I want a job.”

Another jobseeker claimed to be a direct descendant of the Vikings, while one candidate listed ‘Master of Time and Universe’ under his experience.

Almost a third (32%) of 194 UK employers surveyed, claimed they spend one minute or less reviewing a CV, while 14% per cent spend 30 seconds or less. Around a quarter (23%) also said they had uncovered a lie on a CV in the past year.

This blog post about Email Campaigns is brought to you by Dylan London and Stream:20, who are recruiting an Email Consultant, see Chinwag Jobs for more information.

Would you turn up to a first date with a spare set of house keys to hand over? Or immediately launch into conversation about which school to send your future children to? Hopefully not. There’s a time and a place and that certainly isn’t it.

The key to lifecycle management is putting a face to the names in your database. Just like you have different relationships with different people at different times in your life, so you should reflect this in your email marketing strategy.

A lot of time, effort and money is put into newsletters and standardised communication with customers/users/members which bear no relation to where in the chain recipients are. While these certainly have a place once the user is familiar with your product/comms, many businesses are missing a trick. (more…)